I often get asked how I got into the business of traipsing through the underbrush and scavenging in the sediment. Did I get all learned up in fancy college? How do I keep from dying valiantly by the miasmal dagger of a rogue toadstool? How can one discern the Shitakes from the shinola?

Here’s a guide for the slapdash forager, the swarthy swashbucklers after my own heart, armed with nothing but a rusty pocketknife, mud-soaked boots, and the gallant heart of a hunter.

1. Frolic in the forest.

Hone your mushroom mind. This is a sublime state of mushroom gnosis, where the detritus comes alive with crowning caps, and the lichen lean in to whisper sweet nuthin’s in your ear. Never forget that you are a hunter-gatherer. You have a second sight that comes alive when beckoned, enabling you to spot your prey in the vast sprawl of primeval morass. We have to process a staggering mess of stimuli these days, dulling our best senses and thwarting spontaneous shamanic illumination at every twist and turn. Visualize the mushroom, and let it guide you where it will. Suddenly you will slip into a state both lucid and liminal, a primal summoning of your nomadic lust. This is the quintessence of foraging. I swoon at the very thought of it.

2. Research your feculent fortune.

Because you aren’t a super-sentient forest crone living in a hollowed out toadstool conversing with the deer & the dryads, you have no idea what you just dug up. After your hunting spree in the witchwood, you’ll want to take your precious toadstools home and identify them like a bona fide mycophile. Bust out the bifocals. Make a spore print, if you wanna show pony around. Check your specimens against your guidebooks, or use the vast swamp of myco-porn on the Internet. Become CONSUMED by minutia- it’s the only thing that will keep you topside of the soil. Here’s a smattering of my favorite resources for the budding forager:

The Fifth Kingdom: The crème de la crème of mycological textbooks.

Wood Decay Fungi: Keys, photographs, and descriptions of macroscopic fungi utilizing wood as a substrate in the Northeast United States.

MushroomExpert.com: Featuring my most favorite mushrooming tool, “What’s This Thing In My Yard?”

MykoWeb: The main attraction at MykoWeb is The Fungi of California. It contains photographs over 600 species of mushrooms and other fungi found in California, with over 480 of the species with descriptions. There are currently over 5400 total photographs of the mushrooms. Included are links to other online descriptions, and photos of the species treated plus references to common field guides. Hubba hubba!

3. Join your local Mycological Society.

Mycological Societies hold local forays, invite guest lecturers, provide cookies, and typically have a handful of resident nut job mycologists who are just chomping at the bit to help you classify your mushrooms. Bring in your haul! High five your brethren! Best of all, you will enjoy the company of sympathetic folk who know their way around an artfully-placed mycological pun, and swoon at the curves of a bodacious Bolete. Find your local chapter online at the North American Mycological Association.

4. Get learned up on your trees.

Fungi and their arboreal blood brothers are inextricably linked in labyrinths of mycorrhizal matrimony. Morels love Ash, Amanitas love Aspen, and so goes the symbiotic Saturnalia of the forest floor. Knowing which fungi are sweet on which trees can often be the key to identifying ambiguous mushroom mysterions. Mushroom Expert has a fabulous catalogue of North American trees with their frequently associated mushroom kinfolk.

5. Amass your library.

You simply must invest in the following tomes, of biblical importance in my homestead:

Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora

All that the Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms by David Arora

The Complete Mushroom Hunter: An Illustrated Guide to Finding, Harvesting, and Enjoying Wild Mushrooms by Gary Lincoff

6. Go to mushroom camp.

SOMA Wild Mushroom Camp is held every January by the Sonoma County Mycological Association in the redwood-studded wilds of Occidental, California. It’s three days of woodland reverie, featuring forays, mushroom cuisine, and workshops on mushroom identification, cooking, dyeing, paper-making, medicine-making, photography, cultivation, and more. As my love of mushrooms approaches religious ferocity, this was just about the quintessence of happiness for me. We ate homemade mushroom chocolates, and traipsed through the fandangled forest like Hansel and Gretel, with overflowing baskets and the folksy wisdom of our fearless leader, Gary Lincoff  (he was that year’s guest speaker). Before the foray, I chastised my boyfriend for his behemoth basket with a cool “let’s not get cocky here, kid.” Much to my surprise, we filled the entire basket, and were chastising ourselves for our paltry accoutrements (we are from the parched mushroom wasteland of Los Angeles, after all). By the end of the foray, I had of reams of Russulas and heaps of Amanitas shoved down my cleavage, and was bartering mushroom real estate with my fellow frolickers. We ate wild mushroom pizza for WEEKS. Then we went back to camp, identified our burly bounty, ate a wild boar, drank some homemade wine, met some folks changing the world with emergent mushroom technology, and listened to Lincoff wax poetic late into the eve on foraging psychotropic mushrooms.

7. Mushroam with Daniel Winkler.

The Indiana Jones of wild Cordyceps, Daniel Winkler leads medicinal mushroom forays into Tibet and the Bolivian Amazon, as well as the glamorous hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest. Altogether badass, his field guides to edible mushrooms are also top-notch, and he’s doing wonders for rural communities whose economies are based on mushroom-medicine.

8. Don’t be a hero.

The mushroom spirit is a capricious mistress who eats chumps like us for breakfast. Mushrooms, by their very nature, are destroyers. Therein lies their mystery and moxie. There are plentiful reasons they have the nom de guerres ‘Destroying Angel’ and ‘Death Cap’…they allow us to walk between worlds, yet they often slam the door behind them. There is nothing glamorous about sacrificing children whilst being ravaged by Satan in a robust bout of Amanita psychosis (well, maybe there is…but it ain’t worth the gamble when you get right down to it), or having your liver decompose in mere hours in a necromantic tango with the Deadly Galerina. Every year she claims new souls, and even the most reverent and skilled are not above her diabolical law. Experts die at the behest of these sorcerous specters every year - do be a dearheart, and DON’T BECOME ONE OF THEM.

9. Semper Fi!

I have a knife and a field guide on me at all times (an Opinel and The Field Guide to Edible Mushrooms of California, should you ask). You never know what sort of illuminated treasures lie in wait within the cracks and crevasses of urban decay. You have promised your heart to the wildwood now, and must always be prepared for her succulent surprises.

Whilst wading waist-high in the Tule River this past weekend, knee deep in a pilgrimage of ancient longings and primitive passions, I lost myself in an accidental ritual to the Hamadryads.

Trudging upstream with my best gal by my side and a heart full of oakmoss & pine resin, we clamored up rocks on paths that winter shut down months ago. Hiking with wild visions of my love and I exploding in arboreal awesomeness, the forest suddenly spasmed alive into a hallucinatory vortex of beating wings.  Lickety-split, I was ensconced in orgies of ladybugs, consecrating every inch of the forest floor whilst making a boudoir of my face. They dripped from every branch and clung to every leaf in concupiscent splendor, copulating, humming, in a resplendent chorus of  “Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!”, consummating every prayer ever invoked to panoplies of Gods both alive and dead.

Botanarchy as a concept marks the end of the repression and exploitation of natural and human resources at the hands of hierarchical structures, patriarchal paradigms, and opportunistic, parasitic industry. It is the crack in the concrete where the Dandelion crawls through, the stone wall of the cathedral choked in moss, the anima mundi of Swamp Thing. It is the reckoning of vegetative consciousness, of emancipated, green chaos dancing upon the ruins of a toppled society. Botanarchists are agents of rewilding, the biological conservation movement based on re-introducing predatory, carnivorous species back into the wilderness to restore and protect the environment. An homage to the cabalistic power of plants, Botanarchists bow down before their profound provocations of healing and gnosis. The work we engage in is the marriage of traditional witchcraft, folk medicine, and anarcha-feminist collectives from the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The purpose of Botanarchy is to support the liberation of the oppressed - those enslaved by autocratic structures that do not value their personhood, any structure that exploits people and the planet for profit - and bring about changes that allow ALL sentient beings to live and thrive. The core of my work is based on Ecofeminist theory, and advocates replacing despotic power systems with a feminized, earth-based system valuing collectivity and connectivity. It hearkens to what Terrence McKenna deemed ’the archaic revival.’ It acknowledges a relationship between patriarchal oppression and the destruction of nature in the name of progress and profit, and looks towards how we can counter the violence inherent in these processes.

I offer up this ritual as a tool for self-sovereignty and empowerment, as an exploration of earth-based consciousness, or a magical weapon to target structures destroying human liberty and the planet. It has been performed on a number of occasions with much aplomb, to target the military-industrial complex, corporate plutocracy, rampant consumerism, the prison-industrial complex, destructive industry, and big pharma.

Statement of Intent

It is our will to liberate the natural world from its parasitic relationship with destructive technology by invoking Botanarchy, and unleash it as a predatory species to re-wild the ecosystem and reinstate the reign of earth-based consciousness.

Materials

Soundtrack: Phillip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi. This is the score to Glass’ film of the same name, a rumination on the Hopi concept of ‘Life Out of Balance’ or ‘Life Disintegrating.’ Koyaanisqatsi is also the mantra of Botanarchy. It is the battle cry of the forest, alluding to three Hopi prophecies harkening to the destruction and disintegration of the natural world at the behest of ‘progress.’ It calls upon the need for a reckoning to bring balance back to the earth in the wake of the wreckage. The tracks ‘Prophecies’ and ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ work exceptionally well back to back for the duration of the rite, followed by a ribald dance party to Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Dancin’ In The Ruins.’

Supplies: Foraged plant material & forest debris used to restrain, choke, batter, whip, assault, and beat parasitic industry into submission. An expedition of Botanarchists can be dispatched prior to the rite to collect vines, cactus paddles, leaf whips, switches, bark, and dirt for this purpose.

Procedure

The ritual should be performed in the evening, in a temple in the Witchwood. It is also entirely suitable to perform this in public, or in a gussied-up living room of your choice.

Invocants will arrange themselves into two separate camps: Those who will invoke unrestrained industrialization, and those who will invoke Botanarchy. Industrialists will begin naked, standing, in the center of the temple. Botanarchists will begin nude, on their knees, in the periphery, armed with their arsenal of vegetation.

A Priestess of Botanarchy will fumigate the temple with Incense and cue Phillip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi.

Industrialists will invoke the oppressive sprawl of noxious industry, summoning it forth in spews of caustic aggression. If they choose to, Industrialists can invoke a particular archetype, godform, or agent of industry that resonates with them personally, representing the unfettered dominance of patriarchal hegemony. They many choose to invoke a structure they want to see destroyed, i.e. a coal plant, Monsanto, the Northwest Pipeline, etc.

In the vegetation belt, Botanarchists will invoke Botanarchy, crawling, twining, and sprouting forth vegetative consciousness. They can chant the mantra Koyaanisqatsi (‘Life Disintegrating’) silently or lightly, if the spirit moves them.

As the industrial tumult boils to a crescendo, Botanarchists will crawl towards the city armed with their pincers, vines, paddles, switches, and stumps. The plants will strip, restrain, batter, whip and overtake Industrialists with their vegetative weapons. Botanarchists should whip the Industrialists into submission, silencing them with any and everything at their disposal. Chanting of Koyaanisqatsi may become audibly louder at this point. Eventually, the Botanarchists will bring the Industrialists to their knees, enshrining them in plant matter.

With the city now in dust, Botanarchists entwine themselves over the wreckage, covering it with their mossy debris. All will chant Koyaanisqatsi along with the score until the temple falls silent.

Banish with an ecstatic naked dance party to Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Dancin’ In The Ruins’.